Canadian News

OTTAWA – A broadcasting advocacy group is urging the federal Heritage minister to put an end to the seemingly “cozy” and “unacceptable” relationship between senior officials in his department and Facebook after emails show the tech giant trying to recruit policy workers from the government.

In February, Facebook’s Canadian Head of Policy Kevin Chan emailed Owen Ripley, a senior official at Canadian Heritage, asking him if he knew of a “promising senior analyst” within the public service he could poach, according to emails obtained by the NDP and first published by The Toronto Star Wednesday.

In his message to Ripley, Chan says that Facebook is looking for potential applicants for a “challenging,” “fascinating” and lucrative job within Facebook’s public policy team.

“I am happy to circulate to a few people who might be good candidates,” replied Ripley, who is director general, broadcasting, copyright & creative marketplace at the department and is currently spearheading the government’s efforts to regulate internet giants such as Facebook.

The apparently “chummy” relationship between Facebook and a senior official of the federal department that is meant to regulate the company is of great concern to FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting, an independent media advocacy group.

“FRIENDS is alarmed to learn of the cozy relationship between one of Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s most senior officials … and Facebook’s most senior Canadian lobbyist,” the organization’s executive director, Daniel Bernhard, wrote in a letter to Guilbeault Thursday.

“This revelation is especially critical as it comes precisely as the Department of Canadian Heritage was drafting legislation that would have major impacts for Facebook.”

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Of particular alarm for Bernhard is the fact that Chan told Ripley that he was open to hiring public servants who took a temporary leave of absence from their department to come work for Facebook. They could then later return to their public sector jobs.

“Incredibly, Mr. Ripley saw no problem with Facebook’s suggestion that these staffers return to public office after a short stint at Facebook, so that they could resume regulating the company that had just paid them handsomely,” Bernhard wrote to the minister.

“As the country awaits long-promised amendments to the Broadcasting Act that could have a significant impact on Facebook, the appearance of a cozy, undisclosed relationship between Facebook and senior officials in your department could undermine public confidence,” he said.

FRIENDS is urging Guilbeault to publicly denounce Ripley’s “unacceptable” behaviour and to publish a list of meetings between Chan and officials at both Canadian Heritage and his office.

“To clear the air further, it would help to quickly introduce legislation that ends special treatment for Facebook and their ilk, by ensuring they comply with Canadian law, pay Canadian taxes, and submit to Canadian regulatory requirements, just like any other company,” Bernhard’s letter continues.

In a statement that didn’t refer to Ripley directly, Steven Guilbeault said that he fully trusted the public service to give “independent” recommendations and that it was up to the department to manage any human resource issues.

But he also warned that public servants must always steer away from any real or apparent conflicts of interest.

“Public servants also have a responsibility to minimize the possibility of real, apparent or potential conflict of interest between their current responsibilities within the federal public service and their subsequent employment outside of government,” the minister said in an email.

A spokesperson for Canadian Heritage sent a similar statement Friday, saying that public servants are free to pursue professional job opportunities sent by stakeholders outside of government so long as they “minimize” the possibility of conflict of interest. The department did not say if any sanctions or issues were raised with Ripley specifically.

Guilbeault also reiterated that his government is “strongly” committed to taxing web giants and making sure their revenues were shared “more fairly” with Canadian media.

It’s a request that has been made for years by the cultural sector, news publishers and broadcasters as well as industry analysts, who argue that web giants such as Facebook and Google eat up a majority of the country’s ad revenue all the while paying little to no taxes, or fees to content creators.

According to a report published last week by News Media Canada, an alliance of major publishers including the Toronto Star and Postmedia Network Canada, which owns the National Post, Facebook and Google alone soak up roughly 75 per cent of digital advertising revenues in Canada.

“We will be announcing very good news soon, as the first step for a comprehensive and fairer digital regulatory framework in Canada,” Guilbeault added in his statement.

Facebook Canada did not respond to questions on Friday.

• Email: cnardi@postmedia.com | Twitter: ChrisGNardi

Canadians are being urged yet again to limit their contacts with other humans to prevent a resurgence of COVID-19. But while the second wave will require “weeks and months” of sacrifice, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemed to be ruling out any repeat of the nationwide spring shutdown.

According to the latest federal modelling data, confirmed cases in Canada could exceed 8,000 daily by December if people maintain their current rate of contact with others. Expose themselves to more people, the pandemic will resurge even “faster and stronger.”

“We know what bad behaviour leads to,” Trudeau said at a media briefing Friday. “We know when people actually do follow instructions and manage to reduce their contacts and do the things that matter, we know that we do see better outcomes,” Trudeau said.

However, “We shut down our economy and our communities and our country in March, and yet the curve continued for a number more months, and that’s what we really have to remember,” he added.

“This is temporary but we have to get through it. We have to make sure that it’s not just, ‘OK, I’m going to hole down today and not see anyone, or hole down today, tomorrow and this week’ — we have to continue to engage in these behaviours, even as it becomes frustrating.”

The country has been able to avoid large-scale shutdowns because more is now known about the virus and how it spreads, said Trudeau. “We are able to do things now in a targeted way that is better able to prevent needing a very blunt instrument of a nationwide massive shutdown,” Trudeau said.

According to the latest federal projections, daily case counts of COVID-19 continue to increase nationally, the percentage of people testing positive is rising across the country, deaths are steadily increasing and confirmed infections are growing across all age groups, though they remain highest among the under 40-year-olds, the update shows.

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While growth in Quebec seems to be stabilizing, over the past two weeks British Columbia, the Prairies and Ontario all marked their highest daily case counts since the beginning of the pandemic, Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said at Friday’s briefing. However, Ontario appears to be dodging its worst-case scenario for the second wave: although cases are still increasing, the growth of the pandemic appears to be slowing, according to provincial data released Thursday.

Nationally, the reproduction rate remains above one, meaning every 100 people infected are passing the virus to more than 100 others, “with each new generational spread getting larger,” Tam said. The epidemic dies out when each new case infects less than one person.

According to the short-term forecast, deaths could reach 10,400 by Nov. 8.

Early forecasts in April predicted Canada could see 11,000 to 22,000 deaths over the course of the pandemic, with fatalities easily topping 300,000 under the worst-case scenario, with no public health measures.

There’s been an increase in hospitalizations nationally — an average of more than 1,100 people with COVID-19 being treated in hospitals on any given day over the past seven days — but it’s below the peak of more than 3,000 cases a day during the spring wave.

The average age of death for people dying due to COVID-related illness is 84 in Canada; the youngest was 19, the oldest 107.

If Canadians reduce the rate of contact with other people by 25 per cent, the epidemic is forecasted to come under control.

“After Canadians worked with public health to hammer the COVID-19 curve in the spring, we had our first dance over the summer,” Tam said. Now, “some of us have lost our lead.”

“This virus will cut in anywhere and anytime we let it.”

Tam said people should keep to their household bubbles as much as possible and take “all the necessary precautions” if they have to buy groceries or pick up food.

Not everyone can stay at home. It’s hard to reduce contacts when people are working in low-income jobs that require public transit or living in congested housing. “Not everybody can keep to exact numbers,” Tam acknowledged. “But collectively we need to reduce contact as much as possible.”

National Post

Chief Mike Sack is on his way to Digby. In his pickup, skirting along Highway 101, it is two and a half hours of picturesque driving from his band’s reserve in central Nova Scotia to communities on the province’s southwestern coast, where lobsters grow plump and delicious in St. Marys Bay.

It’s a road he’s been on a lot lately, while his band, the Sipekne’katik First Nation, is embroiled in a stormy dispute with non-Indigenous lobster fishers over its claim of aboriginal right to catch lobster out of season, while others must keep their traps dry.

It’s not a great time for him to be away from home.

Monday is election day, when the 1,400 adult voters, about half the Sipekne’katik band list, elect a chief to lead the province’s second-largest Mi’kmaq community for the next two years.

“I haven’t had a chance to campaign. I haven’t campaigned at all. I’ve just been down there fighting for this, right,” he says as he drives. “But this is a big thing for our community, so I’m putting a lot of my energy here.” There are two women running against him, this time.

“I guess that will be my report card.”

While he is well-known in his community, most in Canada only recently noticed Sack, through the news and, for a certain demographic, online memes, both heroic and horrific, sparked by alarming events as the lobster dispute turned violent.

After a lobster pound housing the band’s catch was attacked, a van torched, and the chief himself assaulted, Sack, a youthful-looking 39 years old, walked over to speak with reporters, wearing a sweatshirt with a fish and moose logo and the large number 1752, the year of a peace treaty between the Mi’kmaq of Shubenacadie and the British.

On his head was a ball cap with a play on the industrial rock band NIN’s logo, cleverly changed to read NDN, meaning “Indian.” He understands the power of visual messages.

Sack told reporters that day, Oct. 15, he is sending a letter to the prime minister, calling for police to protect aboriginal fishers: “Does Trudeau care about our people? Does he care about reconciliation,” he asked. Those are a different kind of fighting words from the often-racist abuse thrown at him in the month-long dispute.

It’s a fight he watched growing up.

In 1999, 35 Mi’kmaq men were charged with cutting timber on Crown lands without authorization. They admitted to the logging but denied they needed permission. They said it was their treaty right. It led to a lengthy legal appeal to the Supreme Court.

One of those loggers was Carl Joseph Sack, the chief’s father.

“I used to cut for him in the woods as a kid. Their equipment was seized and their lumber,” says Sack. “It was the same thing — just wood instead of lobster, I guess.

“We’ve been fighting for this forever.”

Only it wasn’t the same.

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The lumber charges followed on the heels of a landmark ruling of the Supreme Court in a similar challenge, when a Mi’kmaq fisherman was charged with catching and selling eels out of season. That case, R. v. Marshall, 1999, accepted the centuries-old treaty that allowed the Mi’kmaq to continue to extract “a moderate livelihood” from its traditional trading activities.

The loggers were not as fortunate as the fisherman. The Supreme Court later differentiated commercial logging from fishing, saying it did not have the same tie to Mi’kmaq’s traditional trading.

The convictions were upheld but Carl Sack died before the final decision was delivered.

Sack came of age during his father’s treaty right dispute. He inherited his father’s fighting spirit and also his father’s businesses.

Sack became an active entrepreneur. He wholly or partially owned several local companies over the years — construction, management, contracting, excavation, seafood brokerage.

He was also involved in band affairs, serving as a band councillor on and off for years since 2004, and was first elected chief in 2016 — defeating the incumbent by just 26 votes.

This mix of business and politics didn’t always go smoothly. His companies did a lot of business for the band, receiving millions  of dollars in contracts over the years. Sack also lent the band money to help with cash flow, often with extremely high interest rates, which a financial audit released in 2014 called “questionable.”

At the time of his first election as chief, Sack had been under a cloud of suspicion. He was elected while owning a luxury house that was partially built with money stolen from the band.

An audit commissioned by the band found $790,000 of band money was unaccounted for between 2009 and 2012. The fraud was pinned on the band’s financial manager, who used some of the stolen money to buy property for a new house. He hired Sack to build it.

When police followed the missing money trail, they found Sack now owned the house. The manager was charged with theft, fraud, breach of trust by a public official and possession of stolen property. Sack was charged with possession of stolen property and perjury.

In 2016, a jury in Halifax convicted the manager. Charges against Sack were withdrawn, after he agreed to an adult diversion process. By Sack’s account, the manager hired him to build the house but halfway through construction couldn’t pay him. His lawyer arranged for him to take ownership of the house in lieu of payment.

While the prosecutor at the manager’s trial said Sack must have been wise to the manager’s schemes, Sack denies it: “I never knew where his money came from,” he says. By agreement, he paid what the manager spent of the band’s money on the house. Sack sold the house a few years ago, he says, having never lived in it. He called it “the house from hell.”

“I had to fight it in court and spend God-knows-how-much or I could (pay) that and it’d be done with. I had a hard time accepting that because I knew I did nothing wrong but, at the same time, I needed my life back on track.”

Once in Digby County, Slack visited the scenes of the lobster dispute and met with his fishers. Things had settled down by Thursday.

Sack hopes it stays that way. For him, this is how this ends, with a whimper not a bang. No more violence but no epic legal showdown, either. He doesn’t want to emulate his father’s plod through a court challenge.

“It’s going to take a long time for people to get used to it. People are uncomfortable with change, so over time, eventually they’ll adapt to it. They have no choice but to adapt to it.”

Sack says he wants to get home for the weekend, with an eye to Monday’s election.

“I don’t know how much I’ll get accomplished campaign-wise,” he says. He will do what he can before the vote.

Chief Mike Sack is coming home from Digby.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys

“Battleground” or “swing” states, which can switch back and forth between the two major parties in U.S. presidential votes and are heavily courted by candidates, will be crucial to deciding the winner of this year’s election.

The road to the White House runs through a handful of U.S. states where the election is expected to be especially close, due to changing demographics and the polarizing politics of Republican President Donald Trump.

In total, the election will be decided by about a dozen states that could swing for either Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Opinion polls show Biden with a significant edge nationally, but his lead is tighter in these battlegrounds.

Here’s a look at some of the key races.

Florida

Electoral votes: 29

Polls close: 7 p.m. ET (Several counties in northwestern Florida are an hour behind the rest of the state)

Rating in presidential contest: Toss-up

Other key races: Competitive U.S. House of Representative races in the 15th and 26th districts

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Oct. 28 showed Trump had essentially moved into a tie with Biden in Florida, with 49 per cent saying they would vote for Biden and 47 per cent for the president.

With its 29 electoral votes, the state is a major prize, with its massive senior voting bloc seen as crucial.

On Thursday, Trump and Biden visited the same city hours apart, putting on full display their contrasting approaches to the resurgent coronavirus pandemic. Trump staged an outdoor rally in Tampa, while Biden held a drive-in rally later in Tampa where attendees remained in their cars.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 48 per cent of likely voters said Biden would be better at handling the pandemic, while 42 per cent said Trump would be better. Some 52 per cent said Trump would be better at managing the economy, against 41 per cent for Biden.

Pennsylvania

Electoral votes: 20

Polls close: 8 p.m. ET

Rating in presidential contest: Leans Democratic

Other key races: Competitive U.S. House contests in the 1st and 10th districts

The battleground state of Pennsylvania has the highest odds of any state of being the tipping point in the election, according to an analysis by the FiveThirtyEight website.

Here, tensions have been running high ahead of the vote, with the Philadelphia prosecutor issuing a stark warning for Trump campaign poll-watchers not to overstep their bounds as they search for voter fraud. The Trump campaign has said it is recruiting an “army” of 50,000 volunteers to monitor polling places, an effort Democrats say could suppress the vote.

“Keep your Proud Boys, goon squads, and uncertified ‘poll watchers’ out of our city, Mr. President,” Democratic Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said in a statement. “Break the law here, and I’ve got something for you.”

In Pittsburgh, police officers will be working 12-hour shifts during the week of the election, up from the standard eight-hour shift, the department said. A department spokeswoman said the longer shifts have been implemented “on numerous occasions for many different reasons over the years,” though one veteran officer said it was highly unusual for an election week.

Arizona

Electoral votes: 11

Polls close: 9 p.m. ET

Rating in presidential contest: Leaning Democratic

Other key races: Competitive U.S. Senate contest

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that Trump and Biden remain neck and neck in Arizona. Those voting for Biden were at 48 per cent, and those voting for Trump were at 46 per cent, but the two are statistically tied as the margin is within the survey’s credibility interval.

A prior poll also showed a statistically even race, with 49 per cent for Biden and 46 per cent for Trump, with 37 per cent saying they already had voted.

Fifty per cent said Biden would be better at handling the coronavirus pandemic, with 42 per cent saying Trump would be better.

Fifty per cent said Trump would be better at managing the economy, with 44 per cent saying Biden would be better.

“This election is a choice between a Trump boom and a Biden lockdown,” Trump recently said in this battleground state that he carried four years ago.

North Carolina

Electoral votes: 15

Polls close: 7:30 p.m. ET

Rating in presidential contest: Toss-up

Other key races: Competitive governor and U.S. Senate contests

In 2016, North Carolina went for Trump by a margin of 3.6 percentage points. When asked in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll if they approve or disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job of president, 51 per cent said they disapprove, and 41 per cent said they approve.

Michigan

Electoral votes: 16

Polls close: 8 p.m. ET

Rating in presidential contest: Leans Democratic

Other key races: Competitive U.S. Senate contest

Michigan was one of the three historically Democratic industrial states — the others being Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that narrowly voted for the Republican Trump in 2016, delivering him an upset victory.

Underscoring the critical importance of the swing state to both campaigns, Trump and Biden have each visited Michigan several times during the campaign and have deployed surrogates, including their running mates and family members.

Trump traveled to Michigan for a rally on Tuesday and plans to return there on Friday. Biden’s trip on Saturday will be his fourth visit in recent weeks.

Georgia

Electoral votes: 16

Polls close: 7 p.m. ET

Rating in presidential contest: Toss-up

Other key races: Both U.S. Senate seats are up for grabs and considered competitive.

A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday showed Biden with a five percentage-point lead over Trump in Georgia. It’s the first poll in the state where his lead exceeds the margin of error.

If Biden manages to become the first Democratic candidate to turn Georgia blue in 28 years, Asian Americans will likely play a decisive role in that victory.

Their ranks have soared in counties surrounding Atlanta in recent years, attracted to jobs in tech, science and medicine. Now up to almost a quarter million registered voters — more than enough to tip a tight race — Asian Americans here lean heavily Democratic and are highly motivated by economic issues, like income inequality and the call for higher taxes on the rich, pollsters say.

Indian Americans, the largest and wealthiest Asian group in Georgia, are the most inclined to vote for Democrats, research shows. That’s partly due to experiences in their native country, where they’ve seen government-funded higher education, for example, pull many out of hardship.

Texas

Electoral votes: 38

Polls close: 8 p.m. ET (Two western counties in Texas are an hour behind the rest of the state.)

Rating in presidential contest: Leans Republican

Other key races: Competitive U.S. Senate contest

In a sign of the passions sparked by the presidential race, Texas has surpassed its total 2016 vote count four days before Election Day.

Through Thursday, more than 9 million Texans had cast ballots, compared with 8.97 million four years ago, a record high at the time. Neither party knows who will benefit most from the surge, but it has put the reliably Republican state in play as a full-out battleground in the campaign’s final days.

Nowhere has seen a more dramatic display of enthusiasm than Harris County, home to Houston, Texas’s biggest city and the embodiment of its rapid growth and diversifying suburbs. The county’s voting, driven in part by innovations by freshly appointed County Clerk Chris Hollins, so far compose more than 15 per cent of all those cast in the sprawling state.

Texas is among the most closely watched after recent polls have been narrow enough to entice Biden to send his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, to Texas for a tour of the state on Friday.

Many of the Texas counties with the most dramatic surges in early voting are urban centres like Houston, a trend infusing fresh hope into Democrats’ dreams of flipping Texas. But solidly red counties have also seen records. And Texas has historically been lightly polled, leaving analysts skeptical of surveys showing a neck-and-neck presidential race.

Wisconsin

Electoral votes: 10

Polls close: 9 p.m. ET

Rating in presidential contest: Leans Democratic

Other key races: No governor or U.S. Senate races on the ballot

Trump beat Hillary Clinton here in 2016 by less than 1 point, and Biden’s campaign has touted his support for corn-based biofuels for weeks on rural radio and local television stations.

Biofuel plants are an important source of demand for farmers’ corn, used to make ethanol. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has angered growers by exempting oil refiners from requirements to add ethanol to their gasoline.

Rural America remains Trump country. Nationally, voters who identify as living in rural areas support Trump over Biden by 19 percentage points, up from a 14-point advantage in March, according to Reuters/Ipsos polls.

But there are cracks in Trump’s rural fortress, especially in areas hit hard by the coronavirus. In Wisconsin, Trump’s lead among rural voters shrank to two points in polls conducted Oct. 20-26, from nine points a month earlier, according to the Reuters/Ipsos polls.

The deluge of mail-in ballots makes it likely that the winner of several states, including major battlegrounds such as Wisconsin, will not be clear on Tuesday night. Election officials expect vote-tallying to take days.

Minnesota

Electoral votes: 10

Polls close: 9 p.m. ET

Rating in presidential contest: Leans Democratic

Other key races: Competitive contests for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House in the 1st and 7th districts

In hotly contested Minnesota, a federal appeals court on Thursday said Minnesota’s plan to count absentee ballots received after Election Day was illegal, siding with Republicans in the battleground state.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals said the deadline extension was an unconstitutional maneuver by the state’s top election official, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat.

The ruling came one day after the U.S. Supreme Court left in place North Carolina and Pennsylvania’s extended deadlines for receiving mail-in ballots.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, said on Twitter that because of the “last minute” ruling, Minnesotans should vote in person or take a mail-in ballot directly to election officials.

“In the middle of a pandemic, the Republican Party is doing everything to make it hard for you to vote,” Klobuchar said.

With files from the Washington Post

Besides voting for the president and vice-president, the U.S. election is also a chance for myriad other issues to be put before the electorate — and not just in terms of Republican and Democratic policy proposals.

In 32 states, there are roughly 120 issues on the ballot. So, at the same time someone votes for president, they may also have a chance to vote on abortion, the legalization of drugs, new flags, electoral reform and other ballot measures, usually called propositions.

Here are a few of the “other” election issues U.S. voters will consider when they go to the polls on Tuesday.

Abortion

Colorado and Louisiana both have abortion measures on the ballot.

In Colorado, Proposition 115 would outlaw abortion after 22 weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest. There is, however, an exception to save the mother’s life. (Most states have limitations on when a person can get abortion; if Colorado passes Prop 115, it would join these ranks.)

In Louisiana, voters will consider a constitutional amendment “to protect human life, a right to abortion and the funding of abortion shall not be found in the Louisiana Constitution.” This would have no immediate effect, but, should federal courts decide there’s no right to abortion, it would prevent state courts in Louisiana finding there’s a right to abortion.

Marijuana

Several states have ballot questions pertaining to cannabis.

Arizona, Montana and New Jersey will consider whether or not to legalize recreational marijuana.

South Dakota is considering whether or not to legalize both recreational and medicinal marijuana.

Mississippi is considering two ballot measures that basically ask a similar question: should there be medical marijuana for certain patients.

Magic mushrooms

It’s not just pot that’s on the ballot. Washington, D.C. and Oregon states are contemplating the legalization of psilocybin, or magic mushrooms.

In District of Columbia, the ballot measure calls for the decriminalization of entheogenic plants and fungi, which would include magic mushrooms.

Oregon goes further, calling for the legalization of psilocybin. If that passes, it would be the first state to take this step.

Ride-sharing

In California, voters will be asked to consider a proposition that would say Lyft and Uber drivers are independent contractors, not employees. It’s a gig-economy proposition — the first of its sort in the state. It has pitted the companies against organized labour.

Wolves

In Colorado, Proposition 114 would ask the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to reintroduce grey wolves to certain parts of the state by the end of 2023. The wolves were basically wiped out in the United States by the mid-20th century. Colorado has had successful reintroductions before. Local media reports indicate the state has reintroduced lynx, elk and bison over the decades.

Names ‘n’ Flags

The full name of Rhode Island, believe it or not, is the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. A ballot initiative asks voters to consider removing “and Providence Plantations” from the state name. This was rejected in 2010.

In Mississippi, voters will consider a new flag design. They may vote in favour of the new flag or reject the new flag. If the latter happens, a commission will redesign the flag for vote in November 2021. The state’s flag was retired in June 2020, because it paid homage to the slave-owning Confederacy.

These are just some of the more interesting propositions. Scads of other measures are up for decisions, from taxes to election laws.

• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson

My kids have been after me for years to bring an interior designer into the fold for our job sites. And up until recently, I resisted it. Why? Well, for me, it didn’t seem necessary. I felt that our team was up to the task of making the decisions that would usually fall under the responsibility of an interior designer.

But as I let my kids take on more responsibility on the job site, they persisted, and Dad relented. And I have to say, they make an incredible addition to the team. Their knowledge and expertise makes our job as contractors easier — and at the end of the day, that makes for happy homeowners.

So why do you want the services of a contractor AND an interior designer? Here’s why.

What does an interior designer do?

When you think interior design, your mind might immediately wander to things like paint colours and furniture choices. Now, sometimes, this is part of it (and for homeowners who are renovating — a key factor), but interior design is more about how you’re going to fundamentally make use of your space.

Do you want an open concept home? They can design the floor plan. Do you want to add a skylight or some new windows? They can help find the perfect spot.

Interior designers are trained in code, and can help make recommendations on those major structural changes in your home. However, at the end of the day you’ll still need an architect to sign off on the plans.

Your renovation team

Your contractor and your interior designer will be working closely together, so it’s a good idea to look for a team that can work well together. Often, a contractor will have a designer or two they like working with and vice versa, and they can provide some references for you to check out.

This isn’t an excuse not to do your due diligence and thoroughly vet your team. Renovations are expensive, and you want to ensure it’s done right. Make sure you’re asking for several references from each, and calling their previous clients. Online reviews are a good start, but they shouldn’t be your only source when it comes to hiring the people who will be working on your home.

Integrating you team

The most important thing to remember when working with your contractor and your interior designer is that you’re a team. What you shouldn’t do, is hire a designer to come up with a plan — and then once you’ve got the sign off, hire a contractor to do the work.

You want them to each be part of the conversation from the very beginning. A contractor can provide a fresh set of eyes to the designer’s plans and let them know if they’re not feasible for the space. Identifying these problems early is key, because it means less time wasted on the job site, and less materials wasted, which will save you money.

Having the team involved from start to finish is a good way to keep communication open throughout the project. Your team can discuss who’s responsible for ordering which products, and securing permits, and set up a work schedule to ensure things go smoothly.

Why include a designer?

You might think that a contractor is sufficient, so what other benefits can adding an interior designer to the equation bring?

I’ve often found that as a contractor, getting homeowners to discuss realistic budgets with me can be like pulling teeth. But if they’ve already spoken to a designer about their vision — the designer can give them a realistic idea of what kind of budget they’d need to be working with.

Not only is this great for the homeowner, as it will allow them to view their renovation realistically — it makes things easier for me as well. This lets me put my focus on the construction of the project itself.

A designer can also get the homeowner to define the specifics of the project. This helps us create a plan of attack for the project, and helps ensure that it’s a success.

I’ve seen the light. From now on, my renovations will include an interior designer as a key part of your team — and if you’re serious about your project, you’ll consider it too.

To find out more about Mike Holmes, visit makeitright.ca

Psychologist Baruch Fischhoff is considered a giant in the field of risk communication and decision-making.

When asked for his quick analysis of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s somewhat un-prime-ministerial assessment this week that the COVID-19 pandemic “really sucks,” and that unless people are “really, really careful” usual holiday gatherings might be off the table, Fischhoff offered that, for people predisposed to the PM, “it probably speaks to their heart that he’s really worried and he’s willing to kind of let his professional guard down.”

Too often COVID risk communications have been chaotic, don’t recognize the diversity of situations people are in, and are too focused on rules, Fischoff said — “’thou shalt X’ without giving people a mental model of why that is true.

“And the mental model that people need here is not all that complicated — it’s something about how much disease is out there, how is it transmitted in different kinds of settings, how well different practises protect you, how likely are you able to actually implement practises when you’re having a good time.”

The current COVID outlook doesn’t promise a huge number of good times ahead. “It’s going to be a tough winter,” Trudeau warned this week. “This winter will be difficult,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Thursday as that country prepares for a month-long partial shutdown beginning Monday. “The virus is circulating at a speed that not even the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised speech announcing a new national lockdown until Dec. 1.

In Canada, COVID-19 is resurging outside the fortress of the Atlantic Bubble and Northern Canada. In Manitoba, Premier Brian Pallister this week upbraided those Manitobans doing “dumb things” to “grow up.” The province’s chief public health officer said some of those testing positive have had “way too many contacts,” so many they can’t remember them all. And despite pleas to limit turkey dinners to “immediate households,” Thanksgiving weekend is being tied to rising case counts in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta.

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After months of well-meaning but sometimes cloying slogans, about marathons, not sprints and how “we’re all in this together” — COVID, as the annual report this week from Canada’s chief public health officer highlighted, is in fact disproportionately harming and killing the marginalized, racialized communities and the elderly, not the privileged and powerful. A new Ipsos poll for Global News suggests Canadians are feeling sapped; half (48 per cent) said they’re tired of COVID public health recommendations and rules. While the majority (nine in 10) are following masking rules, parents (88 per cent) were less likely than those without kids (94 per cent) to say they’re doing everything they can — “perhaps an indictment of how workable many social distancing measures are in practice for those with young families,” the pollster said in a release.

Renowned epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm says a trifecta of risk issues — fatigue, anger and winter weather that will drive people indoors — is creating a perfect incubator for COVID-19. Add in the holidays, with travel and family get togethers, “and we’re going to see a major increase in transmission in family settings or social settings around the holidays,” predicted Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota. Osterholm, by the way,  in a Jan. 20 statement, warned that the coronavirus would cause a global pandemic.

Without vaccines, “We’re in this period where we don’t really have anything to offer people to limit transmission except their own behaviour at a time when that is a huge challenge to get the public to do it,” Osterholm said.

“If you just make it all dark with no hope, that’s not helpful.”

We’re somewhere between total darkness and total light, he said, borrowing time until vaccines are approved. “What we’re really trying to give people is a sense that this is your COVID year. It’s not going to be like last year. But hopefully it’s not going to be for next year if we have vaccines,” Osterholm said.

To that end, people should limit holiday gatherings to their bubbles, he said. “Don’t fall for some concoction that says, ‘well, we’ll all get together in the dining room and the kitchen and the living room, and we’ll all stay 15-feet apart and, oh, by the way, there are 32 of us in that dining room, kitchen or living room.’ How are you gonna do that? That math doesn’t work out here,” Osterholm said on a CIDRAP podcast this week.

Dr. Zain Chagla has called “cancellation pushback” a canary in the coalmine. “We’ve got several months/possibly years here — if the attitude is nope, people are going to stop listening,” Chagla, an infectious diseases physician at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton tweeted after health authorities urged no trick-or-treating in Ontario hotspots.

Businesses, urban planners, regional and municipal governments can help create opportunities for people to get low-risk human contact, Chagla said.

“Outdoors is still OK — it has to be done safely where something like the Rose Garden doesn’t occur,” he said, referring to the White House super spread event where U.S. President Donald Trump announced Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee to the Supreme Court. At least a dozen in attendance later tested positive for COVID-19.

“Maybe Christmas is not the typical indoor event where you have 12 family and a large dinner and people sleeping over,” Chagla said, “but maybe dedicated green space where kids could meet Santa, decorative lights that get people inspired, pot lucks or markets. They’re not going to be zero-risk, but you can make them low-risk.”

It’s possible that people who paid little heed to advice to limit their Thanksgiving gatherings to their households “thought they were taking a reasonable risk, but didn’t understand what that meant,” said Fischhoff, of Carnegie Mellon University. Abstract concepts like exponential growth are unintuitive; they can be difficult to communicate and grasp. But it also didn’t help that there were differing definitions of “immediate household.”

“We learn top-down from principles if they’re well established, and bottom-up from personal experiences,” Fischhoff said. If someone has been exposed, the ordeal of getting tested and waiting for the results becomes something visceral. “Some people would say it was not such a big deal, but others will say, ‘I don’t want to go through that again, I didn’t sleep for a week.’”

Risk communications should avoid simplistic solutions; they should be respectful, informed, and people should be treated like adults, Fischhoff said.

“I think people could be helped with better information and better options. That will be enough for a lot of people, given they don’t want to get sick and they don’t want to get other people sick,” he said. “They will say there is light at the end of the tunnel. ‘Eight months from now life will become more normal. I want to be there when we get to the end of the tunnel.’

“For other people, it won’t be enough, but it might once the horror stories continue to spread. I don’t know how many people are zero or one degree from a serious scare.”

• Email: skirkey@postmedia.com | Twitter: sharon_kirkey

When researchers in British Columbia tested for antibodies in a small sample of Vancouver residents earlier this year, they found that less than one per cent had definitely been exposed to COVID-19.

That was little surprise, especially at a time when the virus was not spreading widely in the city. But when the scientists delved further, their conclusions were striking.

Large proportions of people who seemingly had never come in contact with the coronavirus, they said, had antibodies that reacted to parts of the bug — that recognized some of the “antigens” in SARS-CoV-2 that switch on a body’s immune system.

If proven valid, the discovery could be a key clue to unraveling one of COVID-19’s remaining mysteries — why infection has little or no effect on some people and yet is devastating to others.

It could also have implications for the effectiveness and safety of vaccines, said Dr. Pascal Lavoie, the B.C. Children’s Hospital scientist who headed the study.

“If what we’re seeing is true, and I believe it is … this could be a major finding,” he said. “It would be crucial to understanding why the virus makes some people sick. … It could (also) guide where you target your vaccination efforts.”

Whether having antibodies to individual SARS-CoV-2 antigens gives people some immunity, or actually undermines their defences against the COVID-19 virus, remains to be seen, said Lavoie.

Such antibodies can sometimes actually help a virus attach to a healthy cell, he said.

He also stressed that the paper, posted on a “preprint” website like many COVID-19 studies, has yet to be peer reviewed and has its limitations.

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Indeed, outside experts cautioned Thursday it’s unclear whether the “unusual” findings represent background noise that comes with the testing or true reactivity to the virus.

Lavoie said new data he has just received addresses that concern and appears to make the findings “much stronger.” He plans to submit the study to a peer-reviewed journal soon.

The research needs to undergo that kind of independent assessment to properly gauge whether the findings are valid, said Dr. Mel Krajden, public health lab director at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

Even if they are legitimate, he said, it would be “speculative” to suggest that antibodies in unexposed subjects explain the wide range of illness caused by the coronavirus. Age is the clearest predictor now of how sick COVID-19 will make people, noted Krajden.

Lavoie and colleagues asked for volunteers to submit to “seroprevalance” testing — designed to tell if someone has been exposed to a virus — in May and June. They enrolled 276 people, mostly health-care workers.

Of those, only three, or .6 per cent, had antibodies that indicated they had been exposed to the full SARS-CoV-2 virus.

But the “remarkable” finding, the paper said, related to the presence in unexposed people of antibodies to specific antigens in the virus — an antigen being a foreign body that spurs the immune system into action.

About 82 per cent had reactivity to the virus’s famous spike protein, 47 per cent to another of its antigens and seven per cent to a third, the researchers concluded.

Where those antibodies came from is unclear. It might be they’re a result of contracting seasonal coronaviruses, the kind that cause colds, said Lavoie.

But it’s also possible something else entirely produced the antibodies, from bacteria to food, he said.

If the findings are confirmed as accurate, the next step would be to study the links between antibody levels and the severity of illness in people infected by SARS-CoV-2, said Lavoie.

Dr. Catherine Hankins, a McGill University population health professor and co-chair of Canada’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, said she wouldn’t read too much into the paper because it’s unclear whether the antibody findings are background noise or true reactivity. Plus, the sample size is tiny compared to some seroprevalence studies that have tested thousands of people.

But she said the question of how antibodies to other viruses might affect a person’s response to COVID-19 — something called cross-reactivity — is an important one.

It’s still murky, for instance, why young children are relatively unaffected by the virus, while elderly people are far more likely to suffer severe cases.

“Is that in any way related to how many times you’ve had a seasonal coronavirus in the past?” said Hankins. “Or have you recently had one because you’re a kid? … Is it the recent activity that protects? We don’t know yet, and these are the questions we want to answer.”

• Email: tblackwell@postmedia.com | Twitter: tomblackwellNP

OTTAWA — A senator is proposing to freeze pay hikes for all federal politicians as the pandemic continues to roil the Canadian economy, part of an effort to ensure that public officials are not entirely insulated from the economic fallout of government-imposed lockdowns.

Sen. Lucie Moncion, who represents Ontario, introduced a motion in the upper chamber earlier this week that would call upon the Liberal government to defer pay hikes for Parliamentarians as a way to “prevent the privileges that senators enjoy from becoming disconnected from the harsh economic reality facing many Canadians.”

Members of both the House of Commons and Senate receive automatic pay raises equal to inflation every year. MPs make annual salaries of $182,600, not including additional payments for special positions like prime minister or opposition leader. Senators make a base salary of $157,600.

The motion by Moncion, an independent senator  appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, would effectively freeze those automatic pay hikes for both MPs and Senators, beginning in fiscal year 2021-22, for a maximum of three years. Public salaries for the current year were approved before the pandemic struck, said Moncion, who heads the Senate sub-committee that approves administrative costs for the upper chamber. This year’s pay increases were confirmed in April.

In an interview on Thursday, Moncion said there was widespread support for the motion among senators. It will likely be voted upon early next week. The pay freeze would save taxpayers roughly $1.7 million, she said.

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The motion would largely amount to a symbolic gesture, but an important one as private sector and low-income workers bear the brunt of the economic fallout of COVID-19.

“For people who hold public office, when you see people struggling around you it is hard to see, it’s hard to wrap your head around,” Moncion said.

The motion comes after government-led economic shutdowns earlier this year put millions of Canadians out of work, while causing many other to accept pay cuts or reduced hours. Many business owners, particularly in hard-hit sectors like retail, tourism and food services, have been struggling to stay afloat as economic restrictions have remained in place more than seven months.

The motion tabled by Sen. Moncion would go some way toward showing solidarity with the Canadian public as lockdowns continue to restrict peoples’ livelihoods, says Aaron Wudrick, director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“We keep hearing all the time that we’re all in this together,” he said. “Well, not really if the government isn’t making any sacrifices while other people are losing their businesses and losing their jobs.”

Government leaders in a number of other countries have already cut their own salaries, often by more sizeable amounts than those recommended in the Moncion motion. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her ministers took 20 per cent pay cuts for six months as lockdowns persisted in the country. Japanese lawmakers have taken 20 per cent pay cuts; government officials in India accepted 30 per cent cuts in April for one year.

“We’re not asking for something that politicians in other countries aren’t doing,” said Wudrick. His group has been calling on politicians to take temporary pay freezes for months, after other countries took similar steps.

Earlier this week, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney ordered seven per cent pay cuts for all political staff in his United Conservative Party.

Sen. Moncion acknowledges that her motion would only mark a small step on the part of Senators and MPs, particularly at a time when a second wave of lockdowns in some parts of the countries place ever more stress on entrepreneurs.

“I feel for people who have their own businesses, I feel for restaurants,” she said. “I walk downtown here in Ottawa and you walk down Sparks Street and there’s almost nobody there, it’s deserted. I’m just thinking wow, how can these people survive?”

OTTAWA — The confidence vote drama may have receded for now, but a committee standoff over WE documents and an ongoing ethics commissioner investigation are a reminder that the issues that nearly triggered an election last week are still alive and percolating in Parliament.

The Liberals have once again filibustered the House of Commons finance committee over the issue of redactions applied to the government’s WE Charity documents, dragging out the meeting for eight hours on Wednesday. The chair, Liberal MP Wayne Easter, suspended the proceedings that night due to “health and safety reasons.”

The meeting resumed late Thursday afternoon but the first part of it was conducted in camera, which blocks the public from viewing the discussions.

Thursday also brought news that Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion is dropping his investigation into whether the WE Charity trips taken by former Finance Minister Bill Morneau were an improper gift. As first reported by CBC, Dion has now informed Morneau that he accepts Morneau “genuinely believed” he’d reimbursed the 2017 travel taken in Ecuador and Kenya by himself and his family.

Morneau hastily wrote a $41,000 cheque to WE in July after informing the finance committee he’d just realized he’d never paid back the expenses. Morneau resigned as finance minister and as an MP a few weeks later, saying he wanted to run to be secretary of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

However, the ethics commissioner is still investigating Morneau for not recusing himself from cabinet discussions on having WE Charity administer the $900-million Canada Student Service Grant program, despite the fact one of Morneau’s daughters worked for WE and another had spoken at WE Day events.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is also being examined by Dion for not recusing himself despite his own family’s payments for speaking at WE events. It is not yet known when Dion will release his report, but it could arrive later this year.

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Regardless, the opposition parties are determined to continue with their own study into the matter. At issue in the finance committee are the thousands of pages of government documents related to the WE scandal that were disclosed to the committee in the summer.

The documents were redacted by public servants before being handed over; the opposition parties have protested that this was a breach of their parliamentary privilege, as their motion had directed the redactions be done by the independent House of Commons law clerk.

The Liberals are attempting to address the complaint by having the Privy Council Clerk Ian Shugart appear at the committee to explain the redactions.

“Conservatives, Bloc and NDP are ready to find public servants guilty of breaching privileges of MPs without even giving them a chance to explain their actions,” said a statement by Government House Leader Pablo Rodriguez on Wednesday. “Liberals believe in due process. The opposition should do the right thing and let the Clerk of the Privy Council and his non-partisan public servants explain themselves.”

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre told the  National Post that the Liberals’ proposal does not address the opposition’s complaints.

“The Conservatives propose a compromise: the government should give all of the WE scandal documents unredacted to the neutral parliamentary law clerk so that he can report back to Parliament within a week on whether any of the documents have been improperly withheld,” he said.

“Mr. Shugart is a fine man, but he is hired and fired by the prime minister. He is dependent on the prime minister for his job. No one who the prime minister can fire should be in charge of determining what documents are released about the prime minister’s scandal.”

As of Thursday, there is no end in sight to the standoff, which is preventing the finance committee from doing its usual work of pre-budget consultations.

Meanwhile, the Commons health committee is preparing its sweeping investigation into the government’s COVID-19 response, an investigation that will eventually be supported by a trove of government documents ordered to be produced by the end of November by a Conservative motion passed earlier this week. The committee is scheduled to meet Monday to begin preparing a witness list and a timeline for meetings.

The Liberals have warned that the investigation risks exposing commercial information and thus threatens the government’s ability to procure vaccines, personal protective equipment, and other pandemic-related supplies. The Conservatives say this concern is overblown and that redactions can be made to protect commercial sensitivity.

Although the Liberals had previously deemed a Conservative motion on the WE affair to be a confidence matter, they ultimately decided not to make the COVID-19 motion a confidence vote. That means the investigation is taking place without the risk of triggering an election — at least for now. The Liberals always retain the option of calling an election on their own, regardless of whether a confidence vote has taken place.

• Email: bplatt@postmedia.com | Twitter: btaplatt

OTTAWA — Canada’s auditor general says her office needs at least $31 million in additional funding to fulfil its watchdog mandate, more than twice the amount requested by her predecessor three years ago.

“The money is absolutely necessary in order to deliver our mandate the way we’d like to. As of now, we are focused on auditing the government’s response to the pandemic as well as its infrastructure plan, but the government is still doing a lot of other work and spending and purchases elsewhere,” Auditor General Karen Hogan told members of the federal public accounts committee Thursday.

“So we need the money to be able to modernize our office as well as expand the list of subjects we could audit.”

Hogan told MPs her office sent an official notice to the government in July requesting $25 million in permanent funding be added to its roughly $88-million budget.

But that amount doesn’t include the cost of the benefits and accommodation for all the new employees her office hopes to hire with the extra funds. She estimated those extra costs to total just over $6 million.

Hogan told parliamentarians that major audits expected to be published in the upcoming months would be delayed, such as the audit on the Liberals’ infrastructure plan as well as the government’s response to the pandemic.

The delays are due both to the lack of funding as well as the added complexity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Delivery of most non-COVID-19-related audits is also being affected, she added.

“When it comes now to the work that we’re doing on the COVID response, I think the biggest impact is capacity within the departments and our office,” Hogan explained.

“We’re seeing that it’s taking us a lot longer to deliver audits, mostly motivated by the desire to find that right balance with departments as they provide the much needed assistance to Canadians and try to help us deliver on our mandate,” she said, adding that the biggest slowdowns were with Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

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This is far from the first time an auditor general pleads with parliamentarians for more money, though Hogan’s request is significantly higher than her predecessors’.

In 2017, then-Auditor General Michael Ferguson requested an additional $10.8 million, arguing that it was necessary to accommodate the increased workload imposed by the Trudeau government, such as auditing a plethora of new public agencies and projects.

The government gave Ferguson’s office the increase in 2018, but it was not repeated in 2019 or 2020.

Since then, MPs on the public accounts committee calculate that Ferguson and his successors have requested an increase in funding no fewer than 15 times.

Because so much time has past since Ferguson’s original budget ask, Hogan said her office now needs more than twice that amount to be able to hire a sufficient number of new auditors, bring the office’s technology up to speed and modernize how the office communicates its work with Canadians.

“With the passing of time, there is obviously a need to increase the request. For years, we did not invest in our IT systems and, when it comes to technology, we don’t just have a fixed capability gap. As time passes, the gap grows and it becomes increasingly expensive to modernize our systems,” Hogan explained.

This time, Hogan said she’s quite optimistic that her office will get the permanent funding it’s requesting.

“The conversations I’m having with senior government officials are very encouraging. We have received many questions that we answered. That back-and-forth is what is inspiring confidence in me, and leads me to believe that they have heard us and they are open to our request,” the auditor general said.

• Email: cnardi@postmedia.com | Twitter: ChrisGNardi

EDMONTON — A conservative legal group is challenging new restrictions on gatherings in Alberta, saying they are a violation of Charter rights to assembly. The province implemented the group gathering restrictions this week as it faces record-breaking numbers of new COVID-19 cases.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, headed by lawyer John Carpay, has been involved in a number of high-profile cases over the years and has recently taken up a number of anti-COVID-restriction causes.

The Justice Centre is also representing Canada Galaxy Pageants, a beauty pageant for women and girls based in Toronto, against a new human rights complaint made by Jessica Yaniv, a transgender person.

“We’re publicly objecting to new restrictions on Charter freedom to associate,” said Carpay in an interview with the National Post.

As yet, they aren’t filing a lawsuit or anything of that nature — just raising objections.

On Monday, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province’s chief medical officer of health, announced private gatherings would be capped at 15 people in Edmonton and Calgary, in response to surges in COVID-19 cases that are putting a strain on the hospital system and leading to the deferral of surgeries and other medical services.

As of Thursday afternoon — before Hinshaw’s daily case update — there were 126 people in Alberta hospitals with COVID-19, 19 of them in ICU. There were 4,793 active cases, and 313 Albertans have died.

Carpay argues most of the deaths and severe cases were among the elderly — the average age of death is 82 — and therefore it’s difficult to justify the restrictions.

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Carpay contends the order is based on “cases” of COVID-19, “including thousands of ‘cases’ among people who are not experiencing any symptoms or illness,” he said in a statement about the challenge. He argues today’s cases include completely healthy people who have a positive test, and he disputed the reliability of PCR testing.

Alberta Health Services says the National Microbiology Lab found Alberta’s tests to be 100 per cent accurate.

Hinshaw’s order says voluntary measures in Edmonton haven’t successfully brought the case counts down, necessitating more stringent steps.

Carpay sees it otherwise. “It’s a fundamental freedom that I have as a citizen to invite 16 or 20 people over to my house if I so choose, if we choose to associate with each other,” he said.

“Whether it’s six people or 10 people or 20 people, when the government tells you how many friends you’re allowed or not allowed to have over to your house, that is a very obvious and very direct infringement of freedom of association,” said Carpay.

In her media briefings, Hinshaw has repeatedly pointed out the majority of COVID spread in the province is because of private gatherings, and restrictions protect those who are vulnerable to the disease, as those who are less vulnerable can pass it on to elderly relatives, for example. She has said the current spike in cases is due to families gathering for Thanksgiving celebrations.

Hinshaw has also said the long-term effects of catching COVID-19, even among younger people who aren’t hospitalized, ventilated or dead, are not yet known

In a news release, Carpay said the disease hasn’t killed the early projections of 32,000 Albertans, so it’s not as deadly as initially claimed.

• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson

A coronavirus variant that originated in Spanish farm workers has spread rapidly through much of Europe since the summer, and now accounts for the majority of new Covid-19 cases in several countries — and more than 80 per cent in the UK.

An international team of scientists that has been tracking the virus through its genetic mutations has described the extraordinary spread of the variant, called 20A.EU1, in a research paper to be published on Thursday.

Their work suggests that people returning from holiday in Spain played a key role in transmitting the virus across Europe, raising questions about whether the second wave that is sweeping the continent could have been reduced by improved screening at airports and other transport hubs.

Because each variant has its own genetic signature, it can be traced back to the place it originated.

“From the spread of 20A.EU1, it seems clear that the [virus prevention] measures in place were often not sufficient to stop onward transmission of introduced variants this summer,” said Emma Hodcroft, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Basel and lead author of the study which is yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The scientific teams in Switzerland and Spain are now rushing to examine the behaviour of the variant to establish whether it may be more deadly or more infectious than other strains. Dr Hodcroft stressed that there was “no evidence that the variant’s [rapid] spread is due to a mutation that increases transmission or impacts clinical outcome”.

But she emphasised that 20A.EU1 was unlike any version of Sars-Cov-2 — the virus that causes Covid-19 — she had previously come across. “I’ve not seen any variant with this sort of dynamic for as long as I’ve been looking at genomic sequences of coronavirus in Europe,” she said.

In particular, the teams are working with virology laboratories to establish whether 20A.EU1 carries a particular mutation, in the “spike protein” that the virus uses to enter human cells, that might alter its behaviour.

All viruses develop mutations — changes in the individual letters of their genetic code — which can group together into new variants and strains. Another mutation in Sars-Cov-2, called D614G, has been identified which is believed to make the virus more infectious.

Joseph Fauver, a genetic epidemiologist at Yale University who was not involved in the research published on Thursday, said: “We need more studies like this to find mutations that have risen to high frequency in the population, and then reverse-engineer them to see whether they make the virus more transmissible.”

The new variant, which has six distinctive genetic mutations, emerged among agricultural workers in north-east Spain in June and moved quickly through the local population, according to the study.

Tanja Stadler, professor of computational evolution at ETH Zurich who is part of the project, said that analysis of virus samples taken from across Europe in recent weeks showed they were derived from this same variant.

“We can see the virus has been introduced multiple times in several countries and many of these introductions have gone on to spread through the population,” Prof Stadler said.

Iñaki Comas, head of the SeqCovid-Spain consortium that is studying the virus and a co-author of the study, added: “One variant, aided by an initial super-spreading event, can quickly become prevalent.”

The researchers concluded that the “risky behaviour” of holidaymakers in Spain — such as ignoring social distancing guidelines — who “continue to engage in such behaviour at home” helped the spread of the new variant.

The research showed that the new variant accounted for more than eight out of 10 cases in the UK, 80 per cent of cases in Spain, 60 per cent in Ireland and up to 40 per cent in Switzerland and France.

Stringent lockdowns in the early part of the year helped bring the initial Covid-19 surge under control, with new cases substantially reduced over the summer.

But the virus has spread rapidly back through Europe in recent weeks in a resurgence that has forced national leaders to introduce painful new restrictions on social activities.

The U.S. president is not elected by a majority of the popular vote.

Wait a minute, say that again?

You heard me. Under the Constitution, the candidate who wins the majority of 538 electors, known as the Electoral College, becomes the next president.

The candidate who wins a state’s popular vote typically earns the support of that state’s electors, who are chosen by state legislatures. Each state is allocated a different number of electors based on census results.

Winning 270 electoral votes or more puts you in the White House. And because some states carry more electors than others, it is possible — and perfectly legitimate — for a candidate to lose the popular vote but win the election. That’s why presidential candidates typically focus on winning states like Texas (38), Florida (29) and New York (29) as opposed to Vermont, Wyoming or Alaska, which all have just three electoral votes. Winning three states can mean 96 electoral votes or just nine.

Out of the last 45 contests, five have produced commanders-in-chief who did not win the majority of the popular vote, including George W. Bush in 2000. In 2016, Donald Trump lost the national popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by 2.87 million votes, but secured 304 electoral votes to her 227.

Why are there 538 electors?

There is one for every seat in Congress — 100 senators and 435 representatives — plus three for the unrepresented District of Columbia.

Here, in descending order, is the number of electors pledged by each state:

55: California

38: Texas

29: Florida, New York

20: Illinois, Pennsylvania

18: Ohio

16: Georgia, Michigan

15: North Carolina

14: New Jersey

13: Virginia

12: Washington

11: Arizona, Indiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee

10: Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin

9: Alabama, Colorado, South Carolina

8: Kentucky, Louisiana

7: Connecticut, Oklahoma, Oregon

6: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Nevada, Utah

5: Nebraska, New Mexico, West Virginia

4: Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island

3: Alaska, Delaware, D.C., Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming

Total: 538

When does this voting take place?

While we’re all accustomed to finding out who won on election night, the president is not formally elected until the electors cast their votes. They always meet the Monday after the second Wednesday in December following the election. This year, the electors will meet on Dec. 14 to cast their votes. Both chambers of Congress will meet on Jan. 6 to count these votes and officially name the winner.

Electors are “pledged” to a presidential ticket based on the results of the popular vote in each state or district. In most cases, all of a state’s electors go to the candidate who gets the most votes in the state; Maine and Nebraska also use the results at the district level to allocate a share of their votes.

But, yet, it’s not that straightforward. “Faithless electors” can still cast their vote against the candidate that they are pledged to vote for. Seven such “faithless electors” actually voted in 2016 for someone other than the candidate to whom they were pledged: two in Trump’s column and five in Clinton’s.

The rules, you see, are enshrined in the U.S. constitution. But so, too, is the power the states have to decide amongst themselves how to follow them.

That sounds like a potential can of worms, especially with the U.S. as divided as it currently is?

You could be onto something.

As mentioned earlier, the candidate who wins each state’s popular vote gets that state’s electors. Typically, governors, in advance, have certified the results in their respective states and shared the information with Congress.

But some academics have outlined a scenario in which the governor and the legislature in a closely contested state submit two different election results. For example, battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina all have Democratic governors and Republican-controlled legislatures.

According to legal experts, it is unclear in this scenario whether Congress should accept the governor’s electoral slate or not count the state’s electoral votes at all. And while most experts view the scenario as unlikely, there is historical precedent.

The Republican-controlled Florida legislature considered submitting its own electors in 2000 before the Supreme Court ended the contest between Bush and Al Gore. In 1876, three states appointed “duelling electors,” prompting Congress to pass the Electoral Count Act (ECA) in 1887.

Under the act, each chamber of Congress would separately decide which slate of “duelling electors” to accept. As of now, Republicans hold the Senate while Democrats control the House of Representatives, but the electoral count is conducted by the new Congress, which will be sworn in on Jan. 3.

If the two chambers disagree, it’s not entirely clear what would happen. The act says that the electors approved by each state’s “executive” should prevail. Many scholars interpret that as a state’s governor, but others reject that argument.

The law has never been tested or interpreted by the courts.

Ned Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, called the ECA’s wording “virtually impenetrable” in a 2019 paper exploring the possibility of an Electoral College dispute.

My head is kinda spinning. Is there anything else that could throw a spanner in the works?

Well, yes, now that you ask.

It’s unlikely, but another possibility is that Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence, in his role as Senate president, could try to throw out a state’s disputed electoral votes entirely if the two chambers cannot agree, according to Foley’s analysis.

In that case, the Electoral College Act does not make clear whether a candidate would still need 270 votes, a majority of the total, or could prevail with a majority of the remaining electoral votes — for example, 260 of the 518 votes that would be left if Pennsylvania’s electors were invalidated.

“It is fair to say that none of these laws has been stress-tested before,” Benjamin Ginsberg, a lawyer who represented the Bush campaign during the 2000 dispute, told reporters in a conference call on Oct. 20.

The parties could ask the Supreme Court to resolve any congressional stalemate, but it’s not certain the court would be willing to adjudicate how Congress should count electoral votes.

And what if it was found that neither candidate has secured a majority of electoral votes?

This scenario would trigger a “contingent election” under the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. That means the House of Representatives chooses the next president, while the Senate selects the vice president.

Each state delegation in the House gets a single vote. As of now, Republicans control 26 of the 50 state delegations, while Democrats have 22; one is split evenly and another has seven Democrats, six Republicans and a Libertarian.

A contingent election also takes place in the event of a 269-269 tie after the election; there are several plausible paths to a deadlock in 2020.

Any election dispute in Congress would play out ahead of a strict deadline — Jan. 20, when the Constitution mandates that the term of the current president ends.

Under the Presidential Succession Act, if Congress still has not declared a presidential or vice presidential winner by then, the Speaker of the House would serve as acting president. Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, is the current speaker.

This all sounds so complex. Is there an easier way?

Maybe.

Debate has long raged in the U.S. about this antiquated, and some would say skewed, system. Many would prefer a president elected by the popular vote, with 61 per cent of Americans saying in a 2020 Gallup poll they would like to abolish the electoral college altogether.

But John Fortier, director of government studies at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington and author of the 1983 book “After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College,” said Americans have never felt strongly enough about the issue to do much about it.

“I do think the American people have almost always been against this, or at least if they thought they were starting from scratch, (they would) prefer a system that’s more of a national popular vote,” Fortier said. “It’s on people’s minds, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the highest thing, the thing that they most want to change.”

Barry Fadem is president of National Popular Vote, a non-profit association on a mission to make the results more reflective of the will of the people. National Popular Vote has come up with Interstate Compact, an agreement among states to allocate electoral college votes in accordance with the national popular vote.

“No offence (to Canada), but we consider (the U.S. election) the most important election in the world,” Fadem told the Canadian Press.

“Yet the rule that we are known for around the world — whoever gets the most votes at the end of the night is the winner — doesn’t apply to the most important election the world, and no justification can be made for it today.”

So far, 15 states and the District of Columbia have signed on to the compact, for a total of 196 electoral votes. Fadem said he believes they can get to 270 before the 2024 election.

With files from National Post Staff

Canada Dry settled in court for $200,000 with a B.C. man who claimed the company falsely advertised its ginger content to have medicinal properties.

Most of the $200,000 will be going to a legal foundation.

The plaintiff, Victor Cardoso, started a class action lawsuit on Jan. 21, 2019, on behalf of all Canadians outside of Quebec, arguing that Canada Dry’s label was misleading. This came after similar lawsuits were filed in the U.S. Shortly afterward, two similar cases popped up in Quebec and Alberta.

Cardoso alleged that t he marketing of the ginger ale as “Made from Real Ginger” was deceptive because the product contained no ginger, according to court documents. The argument was later shifted to the ginger ale containing “negligible” amounts of ginger.

“They do buy actual ginger, but then what they do is they boil it in ethanol, and that essentially destroys any nutritional or medicinal benefits,” Mark C. Canofari, one of the lawyers from Boughton Law Corporation who represented Cardoso’s claim, told CTV News .

Ginger is commonly used as an herbal remedy. There’s strong evidence that ginger can relieve nausea, as well as weaker evidence for other benefits, such as acting as an anti-inflammatory.

The owners of the ginger ale, Canada Dry Mott’s, produced documents showing it was made with ginger derivatives. The fact that the ginger ale contained a derivative took a lot of steam out of the lawsuit, regardless of how much was actually present in a given can of Canada Dry ginger ale.

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After two years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses, the settlement won’t even cover the legal fees. Consumers won’t be compensated in any way and there’s no sign that Canada Dry will change its advertising. According to the court documents, Canada Dry Mott’s Inc. “expressly denies liability and is not required to change its product labelling or advertising for products marketed in Canada.”

The resolution applies to the Alberta lawsuit and heads off further suits filed with the same claims of false advertising.

Of the $200,000, approximately $100,000 will go toward legal fees, even though Cardoso’s counsel spent more than $220,000 researching and litigating the case at $950 per hour. The lawyers accepted the case on a contingency basis, meaning they could only pursue a share of the settlement — between around 30 and 40 per cent.

Cardoso and the Alberta plaintiff, Lionel Ravvin, will get small honorariums of $1,500 to recognize the work they did researching for the case.

The B.C. judge argued that courts need to avoid the perception that only lawyers benefit from legal proceedings.

“I am concerned that an award whereby counsel receives more than the amount being paid… on behalf of their collective client class could be viewed adversely by the public,” Justice Karen Douglas wrote. “The ultimate purpose of the class action vehicle is to benefit the class, not their lawyers.”

The remainder of the $200,000 will go to the B.C. Law Foundation, a non-profit organization that does work such as providing legal aid and funding law libraries.

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government will take a cautious approach as election results roll in south of the border next week, but it won’t weigh into the fray.

American voters are already casting ballots by mall and in early polling locations, but many will vote on Election Day next Tuesday. Trudeau said the government will be watching the results on election night, but they won’t have anything to say.

“Like people in countries around the world, Canadians are watching closely the elections in the United States and like people around the world we won’t be commenting on possible outcomes.”

He said the choice is for Americans to make and whatever happens his government will work with the new or returning U.S. administration.

“We will continue to stand up and defend Canadian interests, look for greater opportunities for cooperation and look to deepen the already close ties between Canada and the United States, regardless of the outcomes.”

Trudeau met virtually Thursday with European Union officials, including President of the European Commission Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen and president of the European Council Charles Michel.

Michel echoed Trudeau and said they welcome closer relations with the United States.

“We are totally convinced that it’s good for the future, if it’s possible, to have a staunch alliance with the United States. This is our choice, our political will and we will respect what will be the choice made by the American voters.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump has refused to say if he will respect the result of the vote and has made sweeping and unsupported accusations that the electoral system is fraudulent.

Trudeau was asked how the government will respond to a disputed vote in the U.S. and said he is confident the U.S. will be able to sort out a winner and the government will remain silent until it does.

Trudeau said it can take time, as it did in 2000, for the U.S. to determine a winner, but the government will wait to offer congratulations until there is a clear victory.

The European Union is in lengthy negotiations with the United Kingdom on a post-Brexit trade deal. Trudeau also declined to offer an opinion on those talks.

Canada has a trade agreement with the European Union and Trudeau said he hopes to have a similar relationship with a post-Brexit Britain.

“Canada is extremely pleased to be the only G7 country that has a free trade deal with every other G7 country and we would certainly like to keep that,” he said.

“The U.K. is engaged in many different negotiations right now. But Canada is certainly there to ensure this certainty that can be given to British companies, at least with Canada as other things are worked out in a more complex way.”

Twitter: RyanTumilty

Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com

Don’t expect herd immunity to save us the COVID-19 pandemic, warned a Russian professor after he deliberately infected himself twice with COVID-19 virus to study the resultant antibodies.

Dr. Alexander Chepurnov, 69, caught the virus for the first time in February while on a flight from France to Novosibirsk with a stopover in Moscow, but was able to recover back home in Siberia without hospitalization.

After recovery, he took a test that detected the presence of antibodies in his system, which he and his team at the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Novosibirisk decided to study.

They observed “the way antibodies behaved, how strong they were and how long they stayed in the body,” he told the Daily Mail . But the number of antibodies in his body decreased rapidly, he noted, and three months after he first fell sick, the team could no longer detect any present in his system.

Curious to see what would happen in the event of a re-infection. Chepurnov became his own human guinea pig and deliberately exposed himself to COVID-19 patients without protection. Six months after his first infection, his body’s defences fell and he was again sick with coronavirus.

“The first sign was a sore throat,” he told the Daily Mail.

The second infection was much more serious and Chepurnov had to be hospitalized. “For five days my temperature remained above 39C. I lost the sense of smell, my taste perception changed,” he said.

By the sixth day of the illness, a CT scan of the lungs was clear. By the ninth day, a followup X-ray showed double pneumonia.

However, by the end of two weeks, the virus was no longer detected in the nasopharyngeal tract — the upper throat behind nose — nor in other samples.

Based on his own experience, Chepurnov concluded that it is futile to hope that herd immunity could stop the spread of COVID-19. A vaccine, he said, could garner immunity, but it would be temporary.

“We need a vaccine that can be used multiple times, a recombinant vaccine will not suit,” he said.

Currently, adenoviral vector-based vaccines — vaccines designed to insert a modified COVID-19 gene into the human body to provoke the production of spike proteins that will keep the individual immune against the real virus — are at the forefront of the global race to find a solution to the raging pandemic. However, several researchers, including Chepurnov have expressed concerns that repeated shots of the vaccine could backfire, triggering an immune response against the vaccine instead of the real virus.

“Once injected with an adenoviral vector-based vaccine, we won’t be able to repeat it because the immunity against the adenoviral carrier will keep interfering,” Chepurnov told the Daily Mail.

Shipping company UPS said it has found the package destined for Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which he said contains ‘damning’ documents relating to Hunter Biden.

Carlson said on his show Wednesday night that he had obtained more documents relating to Hunter Biden, but said they were lost in the mail.

On his show, Carlson said he received a “collection of confidential documents related to the Biden family.” Without going into any details about their contents, he said they were “authentic, they’re real, and they’re damning.”

Damning Hunter Biden documents suddenly vanish pic.twitter.com/B2qsajZlID

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 29, 2020

On October 14, the New York Post published a report stating that they had obtained emails from the laptop of presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The Post alleges that in 2014, Hunter leveraged his father’s position as U.S. vice president in an attempt to increase his pay as a board member at Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Carlson said the unspecified documents were being sent to him in Los Angeles from New York, but they never arrived. He said that the delivery company, which he did not name, said the package “had been opened and the contents were missing.”

“As of tonight the company has no idea, and no working theory even, about what happened to this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign,” he said.

Oh for f*%! sake, seriously? Would have been a better story if your dog ate the damn papers. https://t.co/6yllQu7pU0

— Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) October 29, 2020

Later that day, a UPS spokesperson told Business Insider that the documents had been located and were sent back to Carlson.

“After an extensive search, we have found the contents of the package and are arranging for its return,” the spokesperson said.

After his segment aired, many people began to doubt Carlson’s claims.

“Oh for f*%! sake, seriously?” tweeted Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Would have been a better story if your dog ate the damn papers.”

Business Insider said that Fox News did not respond to comment as to why no other copies of the documents were saved.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on his show Wednesday night that he had obtained more documents relating to Hunter Biden, but said they were lost in the mail.

On his show, Carlson said he received a “collection of confidential documents related to the Biden family.” Without going into any details about their contents, he said they were “authentic, they’re real, and they’re damning.”

Damning Hunter Biden documents suddenly vanish pic.twitter.com/B2qsajZlID

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 29, 2020

On October 14, the New York Post published a report stating that they had obtained emails from the laptop of presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The Post alleges that in 2014, Hunter leveraged his father’s position as U.S. vice president in an attempt to increase his pay as a board member at Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Carlson said the unspecified documents were being sent to him in Los Angeles from New York, but they never arrived. He said that the delivery company, which he did not name, said the package “had been opened and the contents were missing.”

“As of tonight the company has no idea, and no working theory even, about what happened to this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign,” he said.

Oh for f*%! sake, seriously? Would have been a better story if your dog ate the damn papers. https://t.co/6yllQu7pU0

— Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) October 29, 2020

After his segment aired, many people began to doubt Carlson’s claims.

“Oh for f*%! sake, seriously?” tweeted Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Would have been a better story if your dog ate the damn papers.”

According to Business Insider , UPS came forward and said it was the provider that lost the package and was investigating the matter.

Business Insider also said that Fox News did not respond to comment as to why no other copies of the documents were saved.

Steve Ladurantaye, a former journalist at the Globe and Mail and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has resigned from a media job in Scotland following allegations of inappropriate behaviour, reports British newspaper the Times.

The complaints against Ladurantaye, who was working as the head of news and current affairs at STV, the Glasgow-based broadcaster, came from female staff members, the Times reports.

Ladurantaye had joined STV in 2018. Prior to that he was well-known in Canadian media circles, working as a media reporter at the Globe and Mail and as a top editor at the CBC.

Ladurantaye left the Globe and Mail in 2013, and following a brief stopover at Twitter Canada, joined the CBC as the managing editor of The National nightly news broadcast in 2016.

He left the CBC in 2018, in the fallout over an appropriation controversy on Twitter that impacted several high-profile Canadian journalists.

After that, he crossed the ocean, landing with STV in Glasgow.

In a piece for the Royal Television Society, Ladurantaye wrote he’d received a job offer to “uproot my life and move across the ocean to lead a newsroom in a country I’d rarely visited, full of stories I’d (mostly) never heard.”

He writes about the professional challenges of working in Scotland, and the different newsroom culture.

“The professional challenges have been daunting, and the cultural changes intimidating. Has it been worth it?” he wrote. “Oh, aye.”

An STV spokesperson told the National Post by email that Ladurantaye “has resigned as STV’s Head of News and Current Affairs for medical reasons around mental health, for which he is receiving treatment.  Deputy Head of News, Linda Grimes Douglas, will oversee STV’s news and current affairs operation.”

“We take complaints about inappropriate conduct at STV extremely seriously. We will always investigate fully, while respecting the duty of care we owe to all parties involved,” the spokesperson added.

• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson